Snoop Dogg leads march on police headquarters

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Rapper Snoop Dogg (centre) leads a march in support of unification outside of the graduation ceremony for the latest class of Los Angeles Police recruits in Los Angeles on Friday.

Rappers The Game (left) and Snoop Dogg, right, appear at Los Angeles police headquarters to meet with police Chief Charlie Beck after a peaceful unification march in Los Angelee yesterday.

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LOS ANGELES (AP):

Snoop Dogg and The Game led a peaceful march yesterday to Los Angeles Police Department headquarters, where they met with the mayor and police chief and urged improved relations between authorities and minority communities.

The rappers organized the demonstration hours after five police officers were shot to death in Dallas.

In a posting on his Instagram account announcing the march, The Game said women and children should stay home and men of color should march to make law enforcement "aware that from today forward, we will be UNIFIED as minorities & we will no longer allow them to hunt us or be hunted by us !!!"

The pair arrived with about 100 marchers at headquarters, where they were surprised to learn a class of 37 new police recruits was graduating that day.

Snoop shook hands with Deputy Chief Beatrice Girmala and others, thanking them for inviting him and The Game to attend a post-graduation news conference. He also wished the new recruits good luck.

"We are here to show love and support to the police force in Los Angeles and get some understanding and some communication, and we feel like this is a great start," Snoop said, with Police Chief Charlie Beck and Mayor Eric Garcetti at his side.

The Game said he believes Los Angeles can set an example for the rest of the country by demonstrating that police and minority communities can work together to keep all citizens safe.

strive for peace

"That's not to knock anybody else's strive for peace or anything or any other body of law enforcement or any politician worldwide," he said. "I'm just saying that this is a strong city that I am from, that we embody as all races and different ranks from the gangs in the streets to basketball coaches to teachers, to law enforcement to mayors, to politicians, to cameramans to the list goes on. I know that together that we can unify Los Angeles."

At the graduation ceremony, Beck exhorted the new officers to not let what happened in Dallas interfere with their mandate to uphold the law fairly for all.

"This is not about black lives. This is not about brown lives. This is not about blue lives. This is about America," said an emotional Beck, speaking slowly and deliberately, his badge covered with a strip of black mourning tape. "This is about a country based on a promise that does not recognize a difference in the shades of humanity. You are the symbol of that promise."